Michael Horace Barnes – författare

This is the fully comprehensive textbook covering the issues, methods and relations between religion and science throughout history and up to the modern day. Most texts on religion and science rightly focus on the effect of modern cosmology and biology on views about God and on the place of humankind in the universe. Many analyze current disputes about Intelligent Design. Some add useful material about notions the soul and inner freedom. A few offer thoughts about miracles. Others devote time to differences in methods in religion and science. "Understanding Religion and Science covers" all those topics well and clearly. This textbook also reviews relevant historical and philosophical background, showing, for example, that some ancient Christians speculated on how God might give order to history without having to intervene, or that the very earliest Christians did not believe in a naturally immortal soul. Finally, the text asks why people differ in their basic commitments, some giving priority to a religiously meaningful life, others willing to face even the most uncomfortable conclusions. The author suggests this may be a divide not easily bridged..This book will appeal to students of Religion and of Science and Religion Studies.

In Stages of Thought, Michael Barnes examines a pattern of cognitive development that has evolved over thousands of years--a pattern manifest in both science and religion. He describes how the major world cultures built upon our natural human language skills to add literacy, logic, and, now, a highly critical self-awareness. In tracing the histories of both scientific and religious thought, Barnes shows why we think the way that we do today. Although religious and scientific modes of thought are often portrayed as contradictory-one is highly rational while the other appeals to tradition and faith-Barnes argues that they evolved together and are actually complementary. Using the developmental thought of Piaget, he argues that cultures develop like individuals in that both learn easier cognitive skills first and master the harder ones later. This is especially true, says Barnes, because the harder ones often require first the creation of cognitive technology like writing or formal logic as well as the creation of social institutions that teach and sustain those skills. Barnes goes on to delineate the successive stages of the co-evolution of religious and scientific thought in the West, from the preliterate cultures of antiquity up to the present time. Along the way, he covers topics such as the impact of literacy on human modes of thought; the development of formalized logic and philosophical reflections; the emergence of an explicitly rational science; the birth of formal theologies; and, more recently, the growth of modern empirical science. This groundbreaking book offers a thorough and persuasive argument in favor of the development of modes of thought across cultures. It will serve as an invaluable resource for historians of religion, philosophers and historians of science, and anyone interested in the relationship between religion and science.